Liam’s Birthday

First off, I can’t believe my baby is five already. I really wish there was a way to slow down time. We decided to combine Liam and Dante’s birthday parties again this year, so they are only days apart and have many of the same friends.

Side note: What’s with people not RSVPing anymore? It’s such a pain in the butt, not knowing how many kids are coming.

So we had the party at Jump-N-Around in Salinas. It was fantastic. The kids got to play in a bunch of jump houses for an hour and a half. There were also some token games (both Grandmothers played the spinning wheel of fortune numerous times) that would spit out tickets, ala Chuck E. Cheese. In fact Liam had over 600 tickets by the end of the party thanks in large part to his Grandmothers. Then after the kids were exhausted, we moved into the party room for 45 minutes to pizza and cake -- That part of the party was a little chaotic, but not horrible. We also had the party start at 11:00, so Brianna could take her nap after the party, which worked perfectly.

So we grabbed up Liam’s presents and headed back home to open all his gifts. He loved everything, but loved playing with his Army men gear that he got from Uncle Mike and Aunt Jennifer. It tied in nicely with his new Army cape that Amanda made him. Once Brianna finished her nap and the rest of us recovered/rested, we went out to dinner at our favorite local place, The Village Restaurant. Then we came home to have the birthday cake I made Liam. My mom bought the William Sonoma train cake pan, so Liam had a train cake. It was a pain to decorate it, but it was nice that each person got one train car – no cutting necessary. It did give you about a cupcake and a half’s worth of cake though, so many of us couldn’t eat a whole car.

It was again wonderful for Liam to be able to have both sets of Grandparents at his birthday. Ken and Diana had to leave on Sunday, so it was much too short of a visit.
Oh and I’m so proud of Liam because not only did he write most of each thank you card, but he really enjoyed doing it – well as long as I let him have apple juice breaks.